Also, one bitcoin transaction takes as much energy as 1.5 million visa transactions[0].
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-co...
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-co...
Assuming the power consumption for 1 BTC transaction is 1173 kWh as stated in the article, then we are off by a few orders of magnitude.
This is enough energy to run an IBM z15 mainframe at maximum configuration (~30kW consumption) for ~39 hours [0].
I am 100% certain that Visa can process more than 1.5 million transactions on such a platform in that amount of time.
[0]: https://ibm-zcouncil.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IBM-z15-... (See page 88)
At the very least banks all have their own, right? And would they not want redundancy?
1.5 million might stil be a bit low though.
That's not how any of this works. Money is not stored anywhere in particular, unless we are talking about physical currency or commodities.
The entire point of a mainframe is to be able to centralize critical things (like credit card processing) that simply cannot be allowed to fail.
Most large banks and credit card processors operate their own pile of magic and then settle after the fact. It's not like VISA's IBM is the one big money bin that everything runs through.
> 1.5 million might stil be a bit low though.
In my scenario above, 1.5 million is a joke. That max spec machine could easily handle tens or hundreds of billions of credit card transactions in that timeframe.